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Pete and Jimmy (Posted on 2023-12-29) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Old Jimmy and young Pete are both tennis champions. They have played each other many times, each winning exactly half of the matches. When both are fresh Jimmy is much the better player, but he tires rapidly so his probability of winning the kth set is pk, where p is the probability that he wins the first set.

If they always play best-of-five matches, what is the value of p?

See The Solution Submitted by K Sengupta    
Rating: 5.0000 (1 votes)

Comments: ( Back to comment list | You must be logged in to post comments.)
I see my error | Comment 6 of 8 |
My formula is indeed incorrect.
The reason is, my formula was assuming 5 sets are always played.
[Edit:  actually that is not the reason]

So the correct method is to account for all the pathways that lead to a win, which is what Steven Lord and Charlie did.

Edited on December 30, 2023, 6:33 pm
  Posted by Larry on 2023-12-29 15:05:48

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